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THE ARITHMETIC OF 
FRIENDSHIP 



Philadelphia 
The Westminster Press 














































Copyright, 1913 
Bv F. M. Braselmann 


©CI.A362003 


I 











































































CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Rare Art of Making Friends. 5 

II. Certain Limitations of Friendship. 13 

III. Making Allowances for One’s Friends. . 23 

IV. Giving Oneself to Friendship.33 

V. The Priceless Rewards of Friendship. . 43 

VI. The Friendship That Surpasses All_53 


























































THE RARE ART OF MAKING 
FRIENDS 
























































. 





* 













CHAPTER I 



[RIENDSHIP is the greatest 
thing that can enter any 
life, because nothing else 
i can so broaden a life. It 
doubles, at least, the value 


of a soul, to itself, to others, and to 
God. Thus it justifies my arithmetic, 



This great thing, like all other great 
things, is brought about; it does not 
merely happen. Common speech is 
right when it talks about "making 
friends”; it would not be right if it 
talked about "chancing upon friends.” 



Therefore no one is to sit down and 
whine because he or she has no friends. 
Bestir yourself! Friends can be made, 
because friendship does not depend 
upon an accident: not on the accident 
of beauty, not on the accidents of 
wealth and rank, not on anything that 








































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

is out of your own control. Friend¬ 
ship depends on one thing alone, on 
character. And because you can make 
character you can make friends. 

In this beautiful business of making 
friends the factory is daily life—com¬ 
mon, daily life. The broader your life, 
the more human interests you touch, 
the larger is your plant, and the more 
productive is your friendship factory. 

It is not only your social life, so 
called, that affords opportunities for 
friendship. Your business also may 
form its circle of friends. Politics may 
give you another circle. Reforms may 
introduce you to still another company, 
and a noble one. Your church life may 
make for you many more friends. 
Your recreation and hobbies are addi¬ 
tional meeting grounds. 

If your interests are narrow in range 
and lack intensity, you are cutting 
down your factory facilities, you are 
sadly restricting your friendship plant. 

8 





































THE RARE ART OF MAKING FRIENDS 

Get out into the world! Friendships 
are made there. Do things! Do many 
things! Do them ardently! Your 
comrades in effort will become your 
firmest friends. Confined to a sick 
room, you may yet get out into the 
world, and enter many splendid activi¬ 
ties. It is not of the body that we are 
speaking, but of the outreaching, in¬ 
domitable, friendly soul. 

For your apprenticeship in the mak¬ 
ing of friends, watch those who are 
plainly skillful in the art, and see how 
they do it. Admire them. Then 
make friends in your way, not theirs. 

In this making of friends there are 
some tools that everyone needs. The 
chief of these is unselfishness. It is as 
absurd to try to make friends without 
unselfishness as to make pictures 
without a brush or a house without 
a saw. Lives lived for others become 
allied to others. Every sacrifice of 
self is a gain to friendship. Shar- 
9 






































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

ing is almost synonymous with friend¬ 
ship. 

Therefore if you are ambitious to 
have a friend, drill yourself assiduously 
in unselfishness. Note how long you 
can go without thinking of your own 
interests. Note how thoroughly you 
can merge yourself in another’s happi¬ 
ness or grief or enterprises. Note 
whether your thoughts when you are 
alone tend to yourself or to others. 
And by all these tests judge of your 
fitness for friendship. 

In our making of friendship the 
companion tool of unselfishness is hu¬ 
mility. Pride is ignorant of friendship. 
Friendship is need, and pride knows no 
need. If you have a friend you do not 
think how you are looking, talking, 
acting; you think of the words and 
deeds and the beloved face of your 
friend. If you would gain a friend it 
is as disastrous to be self-conscious as 
to be selfish, for self-consciousness puts 
10 







































THE RARE ART OF MAKING FRIENDS 

you at your very worst. For the mak¬ 
ing of friends the first rule is, Remember 
others; and the second rule is, Forget 
yourself. 

Human interest is the third tool in 
our friendship factory. The genius of 
friendship dwells in little things. All 
art magnifies the seeming trifles of life, 
and the art of friendship has to do 
preeminently with what unfriendly 
men are likely to neglect as trivial. 

If you scorn small talk, homely in¬ 
quiries after health, commonplace felic¬ 
itations on the weather; if you cannot 
remember names and faces, or the facts 
of employment and marriage and births 
and deaths; if you take no note of 
anniversaries and festivals; if crowds 
annoy you and parlors bore you; then 
you may hail men grandly in rare 
approach as of a comet, but you cannot 
dwell with a friend as a satellite. True, 
a friend has been wisely defined as 
some one with whom you can be silent 
11 



































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 


yet unembarrassed; but that uncon¬ 
strained silence is the shining fruit of 
many rustling words. 

The last tool in the making of a 
friend is courage. Being unselfish, 
being humble, being interested in other 
lives, dare to enter them! Set forth as 
a Columbus on the bright ocean of 
friendliness. It is an enterprise worthy 
of all your best. Is some one wronged? 
Is some one in danger? Is some one 
afraid or perplexed, sad or discouraged? 
Then be a friend before you have a 
friend! Carry your heart to the need, 
and test it there. Prove whether or 
not you have strength for two, wisdom 
and cheer for two. Learn whether you 
are ready for friendship, or must fill up 
still higher your reservoir of character. 

And know that, if you deserve a 
friend, and if you thus humbly and 
unselfishly dare, you shall have a 
friend, and many friends. The way is 
simple; do you call it hard? 

12 






































CERTAIN LIMITATIONS OF 
FRIENDSHIP 















































CHAPTER II 

RIENDSHIP is a thing so 
beautiful that even a little 
flaw is a disaster. We have 
a right to expect wonders 
from friendship; and a dis¬ 



appointment, though a trifling one, is 
liable to spoil the whole. It is import¬ 
ant, therefore, not to seek in friendship 
what it cannot give, or anticipate from 
it more than it is able to perform. A 
friendship may be perfect, and yet it 
is not omnipotent; just as a pen, even 
a fountain pen, may be an ideal in¬ 
strument, yet be utterly unable to 
paint a Sistine Madonna. 

In the first glow of friendship the 
entire world becomes rose color. We 
are completely satisfied with our new¬ 
found joy. We want to see no one but 
our friend, and we want to see our 
friend all the time. We can imagine 

































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

no difficulty that this blessed friend¬ 
ship will not surmount. With it we 
are ready to confront every demon, 
and we fancy that even the angels 
envy us. 

Perhaps slowly, perhaps with tragic 
suddenness, the disillusion comes. You 
see the faults and sins of your friend. 
He is far from perfect. Friendship is 
unselfishness, and he has streaks of 
self-seeking. Friendship is humility, 
and he is occasionally boastful and self- 
conscious. Friendship is helpfulness, 
and he asks for help more often than 
he gives it. Friendship is interest in 
others, and he likes to talk of himself 
more than of you. Perhaps there is a 
quarrel. Perhaps you quietly drift 
apart. In either case you are ready to 
say of friendship, the best thing in the 
world, “Vanity of vanities; all is 
vanity.” 

This result is common enough, but 
it is all the more deplorable; and it 
16 








































CERTAIN LIMITATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP 

may be avoided by the preliminary 
exercise of a little common sense. 

Remember, while you are making 
friends, that you are not remaking 
human nature. 

Remember, while you are so con¬ 
scious of your friend’s faults, that he is 
doubtless quite as conscious of yours. 

Remember that though a gnat may 
spring forth fully formed and perfect, 
a human being is years in developing its 
powers; and the finer and stronger any 
element of your life is to become, the 
longer it will be in perfecting its fine¬ 
ness and strength. 

Remember that it is only in fairy 
tales that a sword flashes into a ladder 
and the ladder into a purse of gold; in 
plain, homely life an instrument is 
good for only its one task, and for other 
tasks you must get other instruments. 
There is no magic in friendship that 
will enable it, for instance, to take the 
place of business sagacity. 










































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 


“But,” you are asking, “does not 
your very subtitle convey an assurance 
of magic? If 1 + 1=4, if the joining of 
friend to friend doubles the resources 
and powers of each, are we not justified 
in eager expectations?” 

Yes, but not justified in expecting 
impossibilities. 1 + 1=4, but it does 
not equal infinity. Friendship exalts 
character, but it does not at once trans¬ 
form faulty human beings into angels. 
Friendship multiplies powers, but it 
does not gift us with superhuman 
characteristics. It is hard enough to 
be even a little unselfish; friendship 
renders us less and less self-seeking, 
more and more devoted to others, but 
it does not work the wonder with a 
“presto, change!” It is hard enough, 
even with a friend, to be wise and 
strong; friendship adds to our wisdom 
and strength, but it has no “open 
sesame” to all the treasuries of heaven. 

Enter a friendship, therefore, with 







































CERTAIN LIMITATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP 

the expectation of being disappointed. 
You will be disappointed less than you 
fear. Allow friendship to surprise you 
pleasantly. Do not make such heavy 
demands upon the bank of friendship 
as to overdraw your account. If you 
are sensible, your balance there will 
grow with delightful and steady ra¬ 
pidity. 

Friends, in the first ardor of their 
happy experience, quite invariably re¬ 
quire too much time of each other, and 
too much interest. Your friend has 
other friends; you would not care for 
him if he were not friendly. He has 
other duties than even the high duty 
of friendship. He has other pleasures 
that attract him, and give him new 
zest for the surpassing pleasure of 
friendship. The crown of friendship 
possesses more than a single gem. 

The highest type of friendship, there¬ 
fore, is stoical rather than epicurean. 
Each friend is superbly willing to get 

19 






































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 


along without his friend. Each friend 
magnificently trusts his friend to go his 
own way. There is no better compli¬ 
ment than this, to be serenely sure of 
another soul, so sure that you no longer 
need, though you richly enjoy, the evi¬ 
dence of sight and hearing. This is 
not the bachelor’s degree of friendship; 
it is the doctor’s degree, and it worthily 
wears the scarlet hood. 

There is much truth, then, in the 
statement that the less need of friend¬ 
ship you have, the more you will get 
out of friendship. To him that hath 
shall be given, to the fullest lakes the 
brimming streams, to the characters 
that are most sturdily independent the 
finest enrichment from other lives. 

Friendship will not do the work of 
hard study, of industrious application, 
of vigorous enterprise, of mental acu¬ 
men, of prudent foreseeing; it will do 
only its own work. That work is the 
intensifying, the exaltation, of all other 







































CERTAIN LIMITATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP 

qualities and abilities and opportuni¬ 
ties. Friendship is not the image, but 
the gold foil upon it. Friendship is not 
the locomotive, but the steam in the 
boiler. Friendship is not the work of 
life, it is its atmosphere. 

All things are good, but in their 
place; and the more a thing is good for, 
the better defined is its place. An 
animalcule swims in all waters, breathes 
in all airs; but a Caucasian is for the 
temperate zone, a Shakspere is for 
London. Set friendship very high in 
your life, but expect from it the high 
work of friendship; do not require it 
to run the whole establishment. 


21 













































MAKING ALLOWANCES FOR 
ONE’S FRIENDS 














































CHAPTER III 

|NE of the fine ways in 
which friendship doubles 
one’s possiblities and capac¬ 
ities is the way in which 
true friends will make allow¬ 
ances for each other. 

At first sight this would seem to 
diminish and enfeeble our characters. 
It would seem to be an acquiescence in 
faults, a weak complacency. “Love 
is blind,” runs the common saying; and 
blindness does not enrich life. 

Rather, in the opinion of some, a 
man’s friends should be strict with 
him. They should prove their friend¬ 
ship by pointing out his faults un¬ 
sparingly. They should hold him 
severely to his very best. They should, 
of course, never fool him with flattery; 
and also they should take care that he 
sees himself “as ithers see” him. They 








































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

should treat him as a stern horticul¬ 
turist treats a choice plant, pruning it 
unmercifully, that it may blossom 
abundantly. 

All of this sounds very lofty, but also 
very forbidding. In contrast with it 
the suggestion that one should make 
many allowances for one's friends, 
though it has an ignoble air, is yet de¬ 
cidedly comforting. 

We so long to have allowances made 
for us. “I didn’t mean to!” we cry 
despairingly to ourselves after some 
folly. “I hate it, I hate it, and yet I 
do it in spite of myself,” we lament 
when for the seventieth time we have 
yielded to some temptation and fallen 
into sin Indeed, the great comfort 
of the thought of God is the knowledge 
that he knows; not that he knows our 
baseness, even all that is hidden from 
the world, but that he knows our good 
intentions, our heart purposes, the 
ideals toward which we are striving. 

26 




































MAKING ALLOWANCES FOR FRIENDS 

Is not this to be also the great com¬ 
fort of friendship? It is one secret of 
the power of those beautiful friends, 
our mothers. They love us so deeply 
that they dare to make allowances for 
us; and by making allowances for us 
they often lift us into a nobility for 
which they no longer need to make 
allowances. They are close enough to 
their children to see their half-ashamed 
struggles toward the right. They 
have watched their children so intently 
that they can read beneath the palimp¬ 
sest of their lives, beneath the naughti¬ 
ness that is all the neighbor sees, and 
easily decipher the better qualities 
that the neighbor does not guess. And 
friends should possess this lovely 
motherliness. 

Such an insight is born of affection. 
No falser proverb ever was coined than 
that just quoted, "Love is blind.” 
Love seems to be blind only because all 
the rest of the world is blind, and the 

27 









































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 


lover alone sees. Love is the Rontgen 
ray of the spiritual world. Where 
others see actions, love sees motives. 
Where others see results, the meager, 
unworthy, often shameful results, love 
sees conditions, compensations, desires, 
and is compelled, even if it did not 
wish, to make allowances. 

One of the reasons also why a friend 
can make allowances for his friend is 
because friendship has shown him not 
only the friend but himself. No one 
can come to know another thoroughly 
without entering into a more thorough 
knowledge of himself. We all are, 
beneath an infinity of exterior differ¬ 
ences, essentially alike. Friends feel 
keenly their friends’ shortcomings, and 
the feeling renders their consciences 
sensitive to what is remiss in their own 
lives The very impulse of love to 
make allowances for the loved one 
throws us back upon self-scrutiny. 
“Who am I,” we readily learn to say, 




































MAKING ALLOWANCES FOR FRIENDS 


“that I should set myself up as a judge 
over my friend ?” 

Thus it often happens that a friend, 
while most eager to make allowances 
for a friend’s error, is most severe with 
any tendency toward that error in 
himself. “I must not lead my friend 
astray,” he says, “by any failure of a 
good example. I must not render his 
struggle harder, but easier.” Here is 
the purifying power of love at work 
most effectively. 

Will the time ever come when a 
friend should cease to make allowances 
for a friend? Will it not often happen 
that in loyalty to friendship we must be 
strict and even severe with our friends? 
If the fault is continued, is not con¬ 
tinued leniency a false kindness? Should 
we not be truer to friendship if we take 
our friends to task, deal sternly with 
them, and in the close intimacy possible 
to us compel them to do the right? 

Yes, if right doing could be com- 






































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

pelled! No, if right doing must spring 
from love of right doing! 

I know a drunkard who was redeemed 
from his drunkenness solely, so far as 
I can learn, because he had a friend 
who believed in him, and insisted upon 
believing in him after all others had 
given him up. The friend did not 
scold or upbraid or lecture; he was 
only terribly grieved, and he kept on 
loving and praying and helping. He 
kept on remembering his own sins, and 
preserving his heart in tenderness 
toward the sins of his brother. Forgiv¬ 
ing and forgetting and trusting made 
a man of his friend. 

Friendship is not a mutual admira¬ 
tion club, but a mutual appreciation 
club, a mutual forbearance club, a 
mutual helpfulness club. Friendship 
does not insanely close its eyes to 
perils. If our friend is on the brink of 
a precipice it does not calmly assure 
him that he is in a safe meadow. But 

30 







































MAKING ALLOWANCES FOR FRIENDS 


neither does it stand aloof with a 
megaphone and shout a warning and a 
command. It throws an arm around 
him and lovingly draws him back to 
safety. 

















































GIVING ONESELF TO 
FRIENDSHIP 












































CHAPTER IV 


N the second chapter we 
considered the independ¬ 
ence that marks friendship 
at its best. But while 
friends are so sure of each 
other that they are quite absolved 
from slavish attendance upon set words 
and the balancing of services, this is 
not to lessen in any degree the absolute 
surrender that friendship requires. In¬ 
deed, the closest friendship, that of 
marriage, while it admits of the utmost 
freedom from restraint, formality, and 
convention, is yet based upon the 
complete giving of the one to the other 
—goods, time, strength, thought and 
affection. 

This is perhaps the chief gain from 
friendship, that it demands of us an 
entire yielding of ourselves to its sacred 
cause. What a bath is to the body, 

35 






































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

for cleansing and quickening, that to 
the soul is the sinking of oneself in a 
noble emotion, a generous enterprise. 
It washes all the meanness out of our 
spirits. It stimulates us out of our 
sluggishness. It sets the nerves of 
our souls to tingling gloriously. Like 
a plunge in the ocean, it puts us a-swing 
with the waves of infinity. 

Life is beautiful and splendid just in 
proportion as it goes forth beautifully 
and splendidly into other lives. This is 
not to adopt the canons of worldly 
success. According to those mean 
standards a life is resplendent if other 
lives—many other lives—humbly bring 
tribute to it, of money or praise or 
service; not if it is friendly, but if the 
world is friendly to it. Success, meas¬ 
ured by a worldling's yardstick, has 
no room in all its palace for a single 
friend. 

Thus friendship is the best prepara¬ 
tion for heaven, where worldly standards 

36 







































GIVING ONESELF TO FRIENDSHIP 

are reversed, and success is in giving, 
not getting. Whoever has yielded his 
life on earth to an honest and thorough 
friendship has served a satisfactory 
apprenticeship to the life everlasting. 

We are inclined in America and in 
this modern age to be too busy for 
friendship. Friendship is one of the 
things we are postponing to the mythi¬ 
cal time when we shall have made our 
fortune and retired. It is in the list 
with books, and music, and travel, and 
recreation; yes, and too often prayer 
and the Bible and thoughtful medita¬ 
tion are in the same list. Some day— 
by and by—when we have earned our 
leisure! 

No one has a right view of friend¬ 
ship till he has placed it by the side of 
whatever he calls his business. Friend¬ 
ship is a business as important as any 
other can be, more important than 
most callings are. By it we get, not 
our bread and butter, but our higher 

37 









































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

and equally necessary nutriment. Its 
wages are paid, not in earth’s perish¬ 
able gold, but in notes on the bank of 
heaven, bearing interest that would 
make any usurer envious. No one is a 
man of business till he is a friend. 

No one makes a success of his secular 
business till he gives himself to it. He 
must forget the clock in business hours. 
He must carry his business with him. 
He must dream of it at night. He must 
see it in the trees and the clouds. He 
must turn his conversations toward it. 
He must lavish upon it his time and all 
his powers. No business success is 
won on any other terms. 

Nor is it in the least different with 
this supreme business of friendship. 
Conducted with less intensity, it will 
go into bankruptcy. True friends heed 
not the passage of time when they are 
together, and dream of each other when 
they are apart. Instinctively their 
thoughts turn to each other. They 

38 

































GIVING ONESELF TO FRIENDSHIP 

constantly plan each other’s advantage 
and they count nothing too good for 
each other. They give themselves to 
their friendship, and only wish them¬ 
selves enlarged that they may have 
more to give. 

It is this generosity of spirit, this 
liberalizing of the soul, and not a 
spacious house and an overflowing 
exchequer, that renders a man or a 
woman affluent. You may be cooped 
up in three small rooms, and yet inhabit 
a superb palace of friendship. You may 
need to count every penny, and yet be 
a millionaire of friendship. Your view 
may be bounded by a brick wall ten 
feet away, and yet your soul may live 
on a mountain top with your friend, 
and the most magnificent of all scenes 
may be spread before you at each 
sunrise. 

Not in a minute is this surrender to 
friendship made by any man, even the 
most impulsive. Love at first sight is 

39 







































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 


only the first draft of love; the outline 
must be filled in patiently, with long 
time and toil. Friendship must be 
learned, like any other art. 

You will fail in self-surrender many 
times at first. You will quite forget to 
give yourself, but will crudely demand 
that your friend shall give himself or 
herself. You will be too occupied with 
other interests, or too careless, or too 
stupid. You will become piqued. You 
will misunderstand. You will give 
half of yourself, and the other half will 
call after it and summon it back. 

But be patient. And then still more 
patient. Friendship is like swimming: 
yield yourself wholly to the liquid ele¬ 
ment, and it will buoy you up; fear it, 
struggle against it, surrender to it only 
partially, and you sink. Sometimes 
boys are taught to swim by the heroic 
expedient of throwing them into the 
water where it is beyond their depth. 
Sometimes Providence teaches us 

40 


n m 




































GIVING ONESELF TO FRIENDSHIP 

friendship by throwing us headlong into 
the deep waters of affliction. More 
often the art comes a little at a time. 

But when it comes, what happiness 
it brings! 







































































CHAPTER V 



|HE selfish man cannot see 

T M 1 how association with other 
1 | men, and especially the 
giving of himself to other 
men, can be anything but 
a deteriorating and losing experience. 
With him, 1 + 1=^. With him, the 
only way to increase is by multiplica¬ 
tion: 1X4=4. He will multiply his 
information, put his money out at in¬ 
terest, build more barns. He has never 
learned the spiritual arithmetic. 

When we say that “all the world 
loves a lover/’ we must omit selfish 
men. They have nothing in common 
with lovers, mothers, friends and mar¬ 
tyrs. Their selfishness has so seared 
their understanding that they cannot 
see what to all the world besides is 
beautifully clear. 

For there is no mystery about the 
45 





































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 


rewards of friendship. The gains of 
learning are abstruse to the ignorant 
man; the joy of a new trilobite is folly 
to him, and he sneers at spectroscopes 
and libraries. The delight of accuracy 
and dexterity is hidden from the care¬ 
less man; he has no conception of the 
pleasure of perfect parallels and neatly 
fashioned joints. The happiness of 
vigor is concealed from the sluggish; 
he sneers at your Indian clubs and 
punching bags and canoes. But the 
lonely man, the unfriended man, has 
no question of the value of friendship, 
and gazes with keen longing after those 
that go two and two. He understands 
without experiencing it the ineffable 
gain of a friend. 

The rewards of friendship extend far 
into the worldly and material sphere 
of life, though they do not begin there. 
Men do not really go far in worldly 
success very often unless they are 
friendly men. The danger of the cor- 

46 





































PRICELESS REWARDS OF FRIENDSHIP 

rupt politician is his incongruous friend¬ 
ships; he finds time gladly to minister 
to the sick, push young men into good 
positions, chat with the lonely. The 
danger of “big finance” is its friendships; 
legally disintegrate a monster trust and 
the component directors will manage 
to pull together very well with a mere 
friendly understanding. The urbanity 
of the successful drummer goes beneath 
the surface, or it would win no customer. 
The large colleges receive thousands of 
ambitious students because it is rec¬ 
ognized that college friendships are a 
powerful factor in graduate successes. 
The value of many a man to a business 
firm is not his sagacity or money or 
skill, but entirely his ability to make 
friends and keep them. Lonely men 
seldom get far in this world. 

And neither do they get far toward 
the next world. For if the advantages 
of friendship in promoting material 
prosperity are many and patent, even 

47 







































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

more numerous and manifest are its 
spiritual gains. 

One of the chief of these blessings is 
the frankness of friendship. Friend¬ 
ship is the universal confessional. 
Burdens hidden from all the rest of the 
world are disclosed to a friend, and 
that very disclosure halves them. 
Griefs are shown that no one else sus¬ 
pects. Sins are revealed that would 
horrify acquaintances; but friends are 
strong to know, and mighty to forgive. 
Perplexities are discussed, doubts are 
confessed, faults are exhibited, and 
friendship has wisdom and faith and 
patience for them all. 

I do not mean that there is no privacy 
in friendship. Friendship would be 
horrible if that were true. Indeed, 
friends are most scrupulous in heeding 
each other's reserve, and trust each 
other as much in what they do not say 
as in what they tell. It is only a half¬ 
way friend that demands confidences, 

48 






































PRICELESS REWARDS OF FRIENDSHIP 


or even desires them. But friendship 
is precious in its opportunity for them. 

But the ceaseless joy of friendship is 
its quiet, steady support. Here is a 
sure anchorage, though the storms tear 
us from all others. Here is one who 
cannot fail us, though all others prove 
traitors. Here is one heart always 
open to us, one hand always stretched 
out toward us. Even if we never are 
obliged to use it, the knowledge that 
such a strengthening is possible for us 
gives us a surer footing, a stouter 
bearing, a merrier song on all our ways. 

This accounts for the friendships 
that the world calls ill assorted. It 
has proved unnecessary that the schol¬ 
ar’s friend shall be a scholar; or the 
artist’s, a student of art; or the rich 
man’s, a man of affairs; that authors 
shall marry blue-stockings and singers 
mate with musicians. These exterior 
likings are well to be had, but they are 
nothing to the inner fact of friendship. 

49 






































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

As we grow older, no truth of life so 
impresses itself upon us as the essential 
isolation of souls. Thousands of ac¬ 
quaintances, but no one known! Con¬ 
tinual intercourse, but no life touched! 
It is among human beings as physicists 
say it is among atoms: millions of 
them in a pebble, yet each in a separate 
orbit. Whelmed in crowds, buried in 
engagements, distracted with meetings, 
deafened with talk, we cry out in a 
wilderness of loneliness, and search the 
empty horizon for a comrade soul. 

But there is no desert if a friend is 
by our side! At once society becomes 
meaningful, and tasks become vital, 
and life becomes interesting and worth 
while. At once the brazen sky softens 
into blue, and sands blossom with 
roses. 

These are priceless rewards, because 
they cannot be estimated. No im¬ 
perial budget is large enough to contain 
them. No Croesus has gold enough to 

50 


































PRICELESS REWARDS OF FRIENDSHIP 

buy them. No Napoleon has general¬ 
ship to conquer them. They are the 
free gifts of love. They are to be had 
for the asking and the taking, and on 
no other terms. They are the only 
things in all the world that are the 
more valuable because they must be 
given away. 

Ah, but no careless asking will 
suffice! Spotless must be the hands 
reached out for this gift, and beautiful 
the heart that can receive it. The 
reward is without price, but not with¬ 
out high deserving. 


















































































CHAPTER VI 


HE beloved Dr. J. R. Miller 
used to say, for many years 
before his death, as his 
statement of his personal 
religion, “Jesus and I are 
friends.” Dr. Miller knew well the 
noblest friendship with men; he ex¬ 
emplified all that has been said about 
it in these chapters. He could not have 
done that if he had not known well the 
friendship that surpasses all friendship 
with men. 

Here our arithmetic fails ignomini- 
ously. If the greatening that comes 
from human friendship is expressed by 
I+ 1=4, what equation can represent 
the results of the divine friendship? 
When the second i means the Lord 
Jesus Christ, i + i=infinity. 

Other things also that have been 
said of human friendships fail to apply 




































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

here. We need to make no allowances 
for our divine Friend, though, alas! 
he needs to make many allowances for 
us. There is no fault or flaw to pardon 
in him. He never disappoints, or falls 
short. Nor are there limitations in 
this friendship with Jesus Christ. No 
duties can conflict with it. No joys 
can enter counter claims. No other 
friendships can make distracting de¬ 
mands upon us. Our supreme friend¬ 
ship interpenetrates all other friend¬ 
ships and pleasures and duties. It not 
only does not withdraw us from them; 
it gives them their chief significance 
and attractiveness. 

“Ye are my friends, ” said Jesus to his 
disciples, “if ye do the things which I 
command you.” Obedience is the fac¬ 
tory of the divine friendship. It is a 
factory in which we do not work alone, 
but the Friend who requires the obe¬ 
dience works with us, teaching us how 
to obey, giving us power to obey. We 

56 






































THE FRIENDSHIP THAT SURPASSES ALL 

could never, unaided, do whatsoever 
he commands us. 

If, as we have found, we must give 
ourselves in whole-hearted surrender to 
an earthly friendship, surely no less is 
required for this heavenly friendship. 
But how often we try to enter into 
friendship with Jesus Christ while 
yielding him paltry fragments of time 
and money and strength and thought 
whose niggardliness would drive us 
from the purlieus of any human friend¬ 
ship! How often, by the evidence of 
our acts, we hold the surpassing Friend 
as of less value than our friendship for 
the creatures he has made! 

The conditions of the divine friend¬ 
ship are strikingly and comfortingly 
like the conditions of our human friend¬ 
ships. 

Time. If obedience is friendship 
with Jesus, we can put ourselves under 
his authority in an instant, merely with 
a sincere “Yes”; but years are required 

57 











































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

fully to learn his will for us, that we 
may obey it. 

Talk. We cannot know Jesus, any 
more than we can know a human friend, 
until we have talked with him, and 
heard him talk with us, on many sub¬ 
jects and for long periods and very 
familiarly. Prayer is the language of 
the divine friendship, and we must 
learn to speak it instinctively. 

Thought. No one can talk his way 
into a friendship; he must think his 
way into it. The reason why our 
friendships are often so shallow is be¬ 
cause they are not rooted in meditation. 

Feeling. Dr. Trumbull called friend¬ 
ship “The Master Passion.” With 
what passionate devotion and desire, 
then, should we seek the supreme 
friendship! To approach it coldly, in 
a matter-of-fact way, is never to find 
it. “Because thou art lukewarm,... 

I will spew thee out of my mouth/' 

If the young man and the young 

58 









































THE FRIENDSHIP THAT SURPASSES ALL 

woman will pursue the divine friend¬ 
ship with the same ardor with which 
they serve their mutual love, they will 
find a love which will enrich their 
earthly love beyond all reckoning. If 
husband and wife will cultivate the 
heavenly alliance as assiduously as 
they strive to perfect their earthly 
marriage, they will for the first time 
learn what married joys can be. If 
David and Jonathan will bestow upon 
their Elder Brother the same affection 
and devotion which they bestow upon 
each other, they will exult in a new 
friendship for each other, dearer and 
stronger than any they have ever 
imagined. 

The rewards of the divine friendship 
exceed those of human friendships in¬ 
finitely in degree, as God infinitely 
exceeds man; but they do not differ 
in kind. 

To know that One understands us 
perfectly, comprehends our ideals, sees 

59 



































THE ARITHMETIC OF FRIENDSHIP 

our best impulses, reads our secret 
struggles against temptation, knows 
our falls but also all our resistances: 

To be sure that if our earthly brother 
leaves us, we have a Friend that 
sticketh closer than a brother; that 
even if our best friends, our father and 
mother, forsake us, our heavenly Friend 
will take us up: 

To estimate the wealth of this Friend, 
and find it incalculable; to sound his 
wisdom, and find it unsearchable; to 
test his strength, and find it adequate 
to any task and mightier than any foe: 

In every perplexity to discover this 
Friend at our side; in every loneliness 
to meet him; in every sorrow to feel 
his arm around us: 

For all the endless future, for all the 
unguessed worlds, to predicate our 
Friend; to know that he who has led 
us through the earth mazes will conduct 
us to the many mansions, and will in¬ 
troduce us to the eternal life: 

60 




































THE FRIENDSHIP THAT SURPASSES ALL 


All this is the high privilege of the 
friends of Jesus Christ. It is not a 
myth or a metaphor. It is not a vision 
and a prophecy. It is a present, 
hourly, substantial joy. 

As our human friendship is the climax 
of our mortal life, this divine friendship 
is the perpetual climax of the life ever¬ 
lasting. 


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